MediaPost submitted an interesting article last Friday regarding the Audit Bureau of Circulation and their decision to include mobile page views into their new data points for newspaper readership. For those who do not know the ABC measures the readership of newspapers both offline and online. The inclusion of mobile readership into these numbers bodes well for the growing importance of mobile in the daily newspaper distribution mix. We at Spreed are very excited about this and knew that it was about time. Clients of ours like Metro Canada are seeing mobile readership that is about to surpass their website traffic and these figures need to be included in any audit of their success. Read more about this decision below:

ABC To Audit Newspapers On Mobile

Acknowledging the growing number of readers who interact with newspaper content via mobile devices, the Audit Bureau of Circulations said its interactive unit, ABCi, is set to begin measuring newspapers’ mobile audiences, including readership on e-readers, through mobile Web browsers, and through free and paid apps on smartphones and Apple’s new iPad.

About a month ago, Apple announced iAds  and when it was first launched there was a lot of speculation as to whether or not it would be the right tool to help media companies monetize their mobile applications. We wrote a blog post on it here stating that it probably was not the best solution for most media companies.

Apple is enforcing a lot of rules around the iAd platform. Firstly, they are controlling all of the inventory. If you want to run a house ad or retain your existing ad sales team to sell your inventory, you are probably out of luck. This would be a major change of strategy for a number of media companies who do indeed use ad networks at times, but usually sell their own advertising and then use networks to fill remnant inventory. Secondly, Apple is taking 40% of all the profits. I cannot think of a single media company that would be willing to give up 40% of all their advertising revenue to Apple.

Today, the Wall Street Journal unearthed some more information about iAds. They found out that Apple will charge upwards of $1 million for certain ad-buys.

To be among a select group of advertisers at launch could cost $10 million or more, the WSJ suggests.  Ad executives say they’re used to paying between $100,000 and $200,000 for similar mobile deals, but Apple is certainly putting a premium price on it’s so-called premium mobile advertising opportunities.

Apple is planning to charge advertisers a penny each time a consumer sees a banner ad, ad executives say.  When a user taps on the banner and the ad pops up, Apple will charge $2.  Under large ad buys, such as the $1 million package, costs would rack up to reach the $1 million mark with the various views and taps combined.

Our question is this, if media companies do not use iAds because it simply doesn’t provide them with the logical solution they need (inability to manage their own inventory and retain significant revenues), how is iAds a premium network? Why would big advertisers opt to spend $10M on a network buy that includes low quality financial apps or even worse fart apps?

I understand that Apple can target based on application category -i.e. Entertainment, but the only applications worth spending big advertising budgets on in that category are the ones developed by big media companies (MTV, CBS, etc). Those companies are using ad platforms that enable them to sell their own ad inventory and don’t take a massive 40% cut, leaving  applications to advertise on that are by no means ‘premium’.

Maybe we are missing something, but there seems to be a disconnect in the logic here. What do you think?

This morning at the NAA MediaXchange Rishad Tobaccowala gave a provocative keynote session on the future of marketing and advertising and how traditional media companies must leverage new platforms to more effectively serve advertising to customers.

As the Chief Innovation Officer of Chicago-based Publicis Group Media, Rishad is one of the most influential thinkers in the North American advertising industry. It is therefore no surprise that the audience was on the edge of their seats listening intently to Rishad`s advice.

We at Spreed found his talk very interesting considering many of his recommendations push newspapers in the direction of a number of the products and services that we provide (mobile platforms, mobile advertising, location based advertising, etc).

Rishad left with 10 recommendations for newspapers to follow in the future that we would like to share here:

1. Be schizophrenic – Only the schizophrenic will thrive. Run two or more business models at the same time but make sure they are very separate. Do not make a big mesh of all your models.
2. Embrace technology – Tech is the new magic. Make sure the follwing ive things are done by the end of this week.
   1. Use an RSS reader and start following your passions through it
   2. Get a Twitter account
   3. Get on Facebook
   4. Get on Foursquare
   5. Go to someone in your company who is younger (probably 2-3 levels below you) and make them your mentor. Take them outside of the company every two weeks and get them to teach you about what is new and upcoming
3. Embrace the blur – Church and state are too separate within news organizations. All elements of a news organization (sales, editorial, technology) need to work together in the same group.
4. Learn fast, iterate faster, make mistakes and don’t be afraid to fail.
5. Do a massive outreach to young people – You want to make the industry exciting. Don`t be swamped with old people. Get youngsters into the industry.
6. Think about what curating, combining and editing really is
7. Platforms – Every company needs a platform strategy. How do you attract new partners? What’s your device strategy (iPad, iPhone, etc)? What’s your search strategy?
8. Make sure that you celebrate the software and technology folks at your organization. Don’t hide them in a room somewhere even if they are strange. Tell them about the business and ask them to solve business issues
9. Think about  the future of your organization. Thank about your organizational design, incentives, benefits, etc.
10. This one was a bit odd and I am not sure exactly what he meant by it, but the industry is not anyone but you. there is not industry but yo, embrace the “muchness”. “This is my dream and I am going to decide how it ends”

A great post appeared on the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing blog today by Andrew Savikas about the new Popular Science+ iPad application. He makes a great point and one that we have been advising a number of our clients to remember. When publishing on the iPad ensure that your content in dynamic and interactive. Do not just recreate your magazine or print edition on a smaller digital screen like a PDF viewer. This is a revolutionary new device so you are going to need to think out of the box; it’s not a black and white static Kindle or Sony E-Reader. Users expect interactivity and the ability to utilize many of the tricks and tools that we are used to on the (social) web today. Here is a link to his article:

Why iPad Adaptation is an Uphill Battle for Incumbent Publishers

Working hyperlinks are the very least we should expect from content like this on a device like the iPad, and they’re the bare minimum form of something notably absent in Popular Science+ — opportunity for engagement. No comment links, no way to see what the most popular content is, no way to email a picture or an article to someone else, no place to submit my own recommendations for better tools or to tweet about what I just read.

What are your favorite media apps on the iPad so far? Why are they so good? What do they do right? What distinguishes them from their print or web version? Let us know your thoughts.

Retail advertising is the engine of newspaper revenue.  Of the $13,356.2 billion spend on national and retail advertising in Q’3 2009, 77% came from retail.    As retailers and newspapers continue to test new ways to engage shoppers, flyers are and will remain an connection bewteen retailers and their customers.

According to Matthew Tilley, COO of Inmar quoted in the January 26th edition of Internet Retailer “newspaper inserts still account for 89% of coupons distributed to consumers and more than half of coupon redemption” .  Tilley also points out that consumer coupon redemption grew by 27% between 2008 and 2009.

As mobile publishers, we are aware of the increasing importance consumers place on their smarphones as a source of price intelligence.  A recent study from Compete demonstrates how smartphone users in general, iPhone users in particlular, have made mobile device an essential part of their shopping activity.

Mobile users are now able to access retail price information on their smartphones because of  the increase in the number of retailers that have mobilized their weekly inserts/circulars.  Virtually every major American retailer now distributes their weekly Free Standing Inserts (FSI’s) on mobile devises.  Retailers continue to expand their use of mobile to engage their consumers and to distribute feature pricing information and mobile coupons.  Retailers as diverse as Armani and A&P have add mobility to their marketing communications activity.  Very recent examples of the expanding role mobile plays in retailer’s  include Valpak’s mobilization of the 17,000 coupons in their vehicle.  Verizon has made their SpendSmart digital coupon product available to their mobile sunscribers.  Safeway has joined Cellfire to allow loyalty club members to download coupons to their mobile.

The mobilization of retail flyers/ circulars and coupons respond to a very clear demand from consumers for mobile price intelligence.

We believe that we are still in the early stages of the mobilization of retail. As more consumers purchase smart phones we will see a dramatic increase in their reliance on their mobile phones for price intelligence and product discovery. Retailers will need to respond to consumer demand for price intelligence with applications of their own and with smart ad placements across mobile applications. Spreed has been following this development – we know that it is vitally important to our newspaper publishing partners because inserts deliver significant ad revenue.  We have built FSI capability into  our mobile application platform.  We call this solution mFlyers.  It has been built to allow publishers to easily sell retail based insert space in their mobile applications. We we will be showing off this functionality very shortly in our blog and on our applications. Keep your eyes peeled for more information soon.